New Zealand
For the last several years I’ve focused on learning everything I can about New Zealand. I’ve fully immersed myself in the country, spending half of each year here, making new friends, driving all over the North and South Islands, racing cars, reading books, and of course, investing in and advising startups. When I’m back in the Seattle region for the other half of the year, I’m continuously on Zoom calls to New Zealand, or hosting Kiwis at my camp on Orcas Island.
No, I haven’t bought a house here — but I do own two cars in New Zealand: a 2023 Toyota Land Cruiser variant which isn’t available in the USA, and a 2004 BMW 320i race car which I race in a New Zealand amateur series as their only foreign entrant.
Whenever I tell my American friends about my focus on New Zealand, I hear one of two things:
New Zealand was one of the best vacations of my life. It is such a beautiful place. Rob, you are so, so lucky to spend time there.
I haven’t visited New Zealand, but it’s high on my bucket list of places I want to go before I die. When I visit, can you give me advice on what to see and do?
Suffice it to say that I don’t spend half the year here just because it’s a beautiful place. I’m focused on New Zealand because it has enormous potential. It’s not the land that makes New Zealand great, it’s the people. People here are truly friendly, warm people. I’ve never been invited into more homes in my life, than I have by my friends in New Zealand. I’m incredibly grateful to the hundreds of Kiwis who have generously offered their time, assistance, stories, introductions and friendship to me over the last few years.
New Zealand is a nation of immigrants with a history of welcoming newcomers. Over the past 25 years, net migration has contributed 30% of the country’s total population growth,¹ and nearly 25% of today’s population was born overseas,² and that number reaches roughly a third for major metropolitan cities like Auckland.
The potential of a country revolves around the quality of its residents. Fully 40% of US Fortune 500 companies were founded by US immigrants or their children, and immigration is an enormous part of what has made the US so successful. New Zealand has the same opportunity, and Kiwi openness to immigration has enabled the emergence of their tech ecosystem.
Recently, there has been an enormous acceleration in the growth of the Kiwi startup ecosystem. After early huge multi-billion dollar global successes like Xero and Rocket Lab, there is a new wave of emerging companies that immediately address global markets. Elon Musk has expressed more praise for SpaceX competitor Rocket Lab than either Blue Origin or Boeing.
Today, most of the fastest-growing Kiwi startups, like Tracksuit, jump directly to building an early stable of US-based customers. Auror’s software for fighting retail crime is deployed across all of Walmart’s US stores. In fact, one of New Zealand’s leading VC firms is named for this phenomenon — GD1, aka “Global from Day One”.
So why consider emigrating to New Zealand and joining a tech startup? Although Kiwis like to complain about it, the reality is that New Zealand’s cost of living is relatively low by US standards. There are a lot of positives to living here. The government is stable, corruption is low, and despite a relatively low GDP/capita, the infrastructure works well. Anyone who’s experienced the sorry state of US highways is amazed by the state of roads in New Zealand. Although the system is far from perfect, there is universal healthcare. The top income tax rate is 39%, and there is no capital gains tax. More importantly, unlike the USA, there are no incremental state taxes. It’s not all sunshine and flowers — if employees don’t work out, they’re much harder to fire than in the USA, corporations are taxed at 28% versus 21% in the USA, there is effectively a 2%/year wealth tax on foreign assets, and a national sales tax of 15% (known as GST). But then again, in cities like San Francisco and Seattle your sales tax can reach 8–10%.
After living in San Francisco for over 20 years, I’m convinced that one of the most important historic competitive advantages of California was that it was a great place to live. The weather was great, the scenery was beautiful, and government basically worked with great schools, reasonable tax rates, and safe neighborhoods. But over the last 20 years California has broken. The California Dream is alive and well — it’s just now in places like New Zealand, not California.
If you’re one of my experienced tech industry friends from the US that’s always considered a serious change of pace and moving to an exciting foreign country to join and help build a startup for a few years, don’t hesitate to give me a call. New Zealand entrepreneurs and high growth companies would love to meet you, and I would be thrilled to make introductions to them.
¹ p21 of Going Places: Migration, Economics & the Future of New Zealand, by Julie Fry & Hayden Glass
² p28 of Going Places: Migration, Economics & the Future of New Zealand, by Julie Fry & Hayden Glass
